The Aviation Bill passed its second reading without a vote in the House of Commons on 30 January.
The Minister announced earlier that the Bill would include a provision which would enable the government, at a future date, to extend the Air Travel Organisers Licensing (ATOL) regime to include both packages sold by airlines and sales as agent of the consumer. This could happen after a future consultation process, yet to be announced.
ATOL is a financial protection scheme managed by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). In the event of an ATOL holder’s failure, the ATOL Scheme ensures customers who paid and contracted with the ATOL holder for an air holiday package or flight do not lose the money paid over or are not stranded abroad.
Meetings and events industry association Eventia, has been lobbying the CAA over its implementation of the ATOL reform.
Chairman of Eventia Regulation Committee Brian Kirsch, said: “Eventia has long argued that it is wrong that event management agencies are required to provide financial protection to their much larger corporate customers, and so B2B transactions with larger companies should be outside ATOL.
“Failing this, we believe there should, be a level playing field between different package providers, so we will welcome a review which looks at the case to include airlines in ATOL protection. However, extending the ATOL scheme to include B2B sales as agents would be a step too far, and a blow to agencies who are still reeling from changes to the TOMS regime which has encouraged them to adopt the agent of customer model.”
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